


but your ghost i will gladly bear

by orphan_account



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (?), (i guess), Aged-Up Character(s), Alternative Universe - No IT/Pennywise, Brain tumor, Chronic Illness, Funeral, Grieving, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Reddie as Husbands, Sadness, i had to?, i literally know nothing about all this medical stuff, im sorry (again), richie is rly sick i apologize, terminal illness, why do i make my children suffer?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 22:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13491063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: the recap of richie and eddie's journey through terminal illness and death. (or; the one where julie just h a d to make these boys suffer again.)(lowercase intended! you might want to listen to sad songs while reading)





	but your ghost i will gladly bear

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i am back! (one last time)
> 
> IMPORTANT: this will, for most likely quite some time, be my last work on this site. i am currently a sophomore in high school trying to figure my shit out and working on my grades. due to being busy with studying, homework and practice basically the whole week (and also because i just got a boyfriend and want some time to spend with him, too) i just don't find the time to write. this also means that my 'richie is gone' series will be put on hold until i've found new motivation and more time to pick up writing again, which i'll definitely do at some point since it is my biggest passion.
> 
> now, to the story. this is something i came up with in the beginning of january but i only got to finish it now. i spent about one and a half days researching glioblastoma multiforme, the illness that is thematised in this story, and about a day writing this. i've got my information from plenty different sites so it may be possible that some things might not add up, if you're specialized on brain tumors and happen to read this, IM SORRY!!! for anyone that has questions: i'll put some short definitions in the notes at the end for specific terms that might be confusing. the story also is really rushed but i want to mention that it takes place in a timespan of two years which would take me a complete book to cover. i still like it, rushed as it is. i also want to acknowledge that i have no idea how it is to suffer from any type of cancer, which is why i didn't write out a lot of richie during his suffering times. i truly hope that i offended no one with my attempt at portraying someone with a terminal illness without having any experience with them myself.  
> the title taken from son lux's 'lanterns lit', a great song!
> 
> now enjoy reading! <3 (and sry for the long 'intro' lol)

 

 

 

 

richie and eddie are 25 when they get the diagnosis. 

lately, richie has been battling with migraines worse than usual, often resulting in nausea and vomiting, making him unable to go to work. he’s been having headaches since high school, mostly due to him staying up all night and never getting enough sleep, but this time around it’s different. 

going to the doctor’s was eddie’s idea. 

he first mentioned it on the third night of richie continuously bending over the bucket next to his side of the bed and heaving into it multiple times. afterwards, when he returned to bed, having washed the bucket out in the bathroom, eddie stroked over richie’s sweat-damp hair and said, “maybe you should go see a doctor.”

richie just answered with a “it’s just bad migraines. nothin’ to worry about, eds”, followed by a “don’t call me that” from the shorter man.

 

it’s been going on like that for a month now and eddie can’t take it anymore. the first weeks, richie had to be personally dragged home from work by eddie, after multiple incidents of him nearly fainting in the office. then, his boss calls him into his office one day, comments on his horrible condition and orders him to stay at home for at least two weeks, until he feels better.

the problem is, richie just doesn’t feel better, blames it on being overworked. the constant pressure in his head makes him feel dizzy and sick, drives him crazy and  _it just won’t go away_ . 

“i think we should really go to the doctor’s office. i’ll be by your side the whole time.”, eddie finally says when they eat breakfast on a wednesday morning and richie barely gets anything down.

“you know i hate going to the doctor’s”, he retorts but his husband puts on his pleading, ‘puppy eyes’ look. “ugh, fine, whatever. we’ll go.”

 

richie will forever remember that day as one of the clearest, he calls it ‘the beginning’ because the repetitive visits of all those different doctors and hospitals started then.

(“could you please describe your symptoms to me, mr. tozier?”, dr. joseph asks.

“yeah, uhm, basically it’s a really bad migraine where my head feels like it’s nearly exploding and i feel really nauseous the whole time and sometimes have to throw up.”, he explains nervously, fidgeting in his seat a little until eddie grabs for his hand. 

“and how long has this been going on now?”, the doctor asks as he continues to write something down on the computer next to him.

“well, i’ve been having some pressure on the head since two to three months and they gradually got worse. the nausea has been bugging me for a month now.”

“he fainted a couple of times and he’s also become very moody”, eddie adds. “if that helps. i dont know.”

“is it possible that your migraine could be triggered by severe stress? maybe through work?”

“i’ve actually been put on a sort of vacation because i’ve been quite unable to focus on work. most of the fainting happened in the office. i’ve been relaxed quite a lot in the last two weeks but my condition didn’t improve. i only get to sleep a good amount of hours thanks to painkillers.”

and then it’s silent for some time, with eddie tracing little patterns on the palm of richie’s hand and up to the pad of his thumb while the doctor is typing away on his computer, the clock behind them going  _ticktockticktock._

“because migraines can be symptoms for quite many illnesses, i’d suggest to refer you to a neurologist to examine your brain further.”)

 

then, the thousands and thousands of tests start. first, it’s just physical and neurological exams and then MRI’s and other stuff.

(“mr. tozier, we’ve found a rather large lump in your brain. we’d like to do a gadolinium-enhanced MRI. the gadolinium is a special dye, also called contrast medium, to help us create a more clear picture of the tumour. for your final diagnois, we need to do a biopsy where we take a small tissue sample from the tumor.”

and there it was, the word. tumor. and the world started to collapse around richie and eddie.

“b-but tumors can be either benign or malignant, right?”, eddie asks and then they start talking more and more medical, of which richie understands nothing, but eddie does of course, having had prepared to study medicine but deciding to take a different route after all.)

 

they get the final diagnosis on a monday. out of all the weekdays, it had to be a monday, the most hated one, marking the start of a new exhausting week. for the tozier’s, it marked the beginning of a new, very exhausting chapter of their life.

they’re sitting in dr. kellar’s office. when she comes in, the look on her face is sympathetic. eddie just kind of has a sensor for bad news. 

“are you ready to hear the diagnosis?”, she asks as she sets richie’s file on her desk and eddie almost wants to scream, tell her that no, they aren’t ready to hear the diagnosis, they never will be ready, wants to jump out of his chair and drag richie out of the office, wants to take him to a whole other universe where sickness doesn’t exist and most definitely, neither do tumors or cancer. but richie just nods, so she continues. “the tumor that we have found is a grade IV astrocytoma, also called glioblastoma multiforme, the primary type. it forms in the astrocytes, little star-shaped cells that make up the supportive tissue of your brain but it can also start to spread into the normal brain tissue. the problem with this type of tumor is that it’s really aggressive and manages to grow a lot in a very short span of time and symptoms can start occurring very late. you’re really lucky to not have had a seizure yet, but they may still occure which is why we have to operate quickly. the tumor seems to originally be located in your frontal lobe, which is responsible for your thinking, memory, behaviour and movement, rather on the left side and towards the back of the lobe, but if we don’t react fast, it can spread into your parietal lobe.” it is, indeed, a lot to take in, mostly because medicine to richie is just really fucking complicated and hard to understand and after some time of progressing, he asks, “how long?”

dr. kellar swallows before answering: “if you choose not to treat it and judging by the tempo that it grows at, maybe three months?” and eddie gasps. 

“what is the treatment?”

“well, glioblastoma usually recurs even with treatment at it’s maximum because due to its location in the brain, it can never be fully removed. and most drugs used for chemotherapy don’t surpass the so-called ‘blood-brain barrier’ that limits the passage of molecules from the bloodstream into your brain. to treat your primary brain tumor, we suggest palliative therapy, which is meant to achieve a longer survival time and consists of surgery, to reduce the tumor’s size, radiotherapy and temozolomide chemotherapy, paired with symptomatic therapy to try to relieve your symptoms. the common survival is 12 to 15 months. we’ll refer you to an oncologist who’ll be able to tell you more.”

 

richie and eddie are 25 and richie will be dying of glioblastoma. 

(at least eddie thinks that richie will be dying because he always assumes the worst and the worst things always happen to him.)

when they get home, they both break down, clinging to each other in a wet ball of tears and snot and murmurs of ‘i love you don’t leave me’ and ‘i love you too i will never leave you’.

“do you want to call the others?”, eddie finally asks, wiping a combination of tears-snot-sweat from his face.

“yeah, i guess.”

“who first?”

“stan.”

 

stan doesn’t quite know how to handle the news, no one really does, but for him it’s his childhood bestest-best friend, something like a brother to him, telling him he has something growing in his brain that isn’t meant to be growing there and will kill him eventually. beverly is the worst, loud sobs emerging from her the moment richie says ‘cancer’ until it’s so loud and unstoppable, ben has to take the phone away from her. she tries to hold onto it, needing something for support, pressing out ‘no no no’ in between heartbreaking sobs.

 

 

from that day on, all hell breaks loose as richie and eddie find themselves stuck inbetween thousands of appointments and visits to the hospital, where richie has to stay. he has two seizures before they finally start the treatment. because the tumor has spread it’s disgusting little finger-like tentacles wide into the surrounding normal brain tissue, the surgery is quite complicated. they remove a huge chunk of the once tennisball-sized tumor and give it to the tozier’s,  _like a fun little souvenir_ , eddie notes sarcastically. he’s tired from all the extra shifts he has to work and  _just wants to sleep_ .

richie’s body responds to the radiation therapy amazingly and even chemotherapy, besides basically turning him into a zombie, seems to work well. he’s in remission for 9 months and everything seems good again. the loser’s all come to town right when the doctors pronounce him to be in partial remission with 85% of tumor reduction.

and then he relapses. 

 

it’s late at night and eddie is woken up due to a loud cry next to him. the bed is shaking, just like richie next to him. eddie finally finds the switch of the little lamp standing on his bedside drawer after fumbling around for a few seconds and blinks rapidly, vision clearing to see richie on his back, limbs shaking uncontrollably. eddie knows that he can’t do anything but to wait for the seizure to be over and make sure richie doesn’t hurt himself.  _he hasn’t had one in ten months_ , he thinks,  _it can’t be happening again._ it stops a few minutes after but when richie still hasn’t gained conciousness, his face all tears and snot and spit, after three more minutes, eddie calls an ambulance.

and then the appointments and tests start again, because almost everyone in the hospital is familiar with richie’s case and knows just what that seizure could indicate. the outcome is that his tumor has shown progression, almost grown back to its former size, even after another surgery and that the doctors, and richie himself, have lost hope in treatment. 

(“if you want to talk me into having another surgery or try another chemotherapy, i’ll tell you right now that i won’t accept it. that tumor wants me to fucking bite it and there’s nothing i can do against that. come on, you’re all starting to loose hope, aren’t you?”, richie asks as dr. kellar enters his hospital room.

“i’m afraid to tell you that, no, at this stage, judging by the rate the tumor is growing at, we see no point in trying more treatment. in a hospice, you will receive treatment to control your symptoms for as long as possible.”, she answers. and god, richie always thought this last year had made him tougher, but he finds himself choking on the lump forming in his throat.  _fuck, how and when should he tell eddie?_ )

and with that, his end-of-life phase starts.

 

richie is admitted into a hospice (though eddie strictly refuses to let him go in the beginning) where there’s multiple nurses always around to help him and give him his meds and eddie always comes to visit between his shifts and afterwards. there’s so much richie misses. going outside on his own. music. doing basic things with eddie because the things themselves, like eating dinner or watching tv, having sex, are simple and plain but its _eddie_ he does them with, eddie spagetthi, edward, eds who works his ass off every single day to cover the medical bills. he misses the feeling of rain falling down onto his face. he misses his old life. he doesn’t want this life full of sickness and hospitals and hospices and drugs. 

and then one day, he hears nurse tina talking to nurse stephanie about how the meds can’t control the intracranial pressure anymore and that the injuries due to the brain herniation worsen everyday. the only part he understands from that is that he’ll die, most likely very soon, and when eddie visits him that afternoon, he tells him that he wants to go home. and eddie reluctantly agrees.

 

 

 when richie comes home, everything is ready for him. their bedroom looks almost like a hospital room now, richie having his own bed by the window. sharing a bed would’ve been hard because richie eventually has to lay all day and sometimes wets the bed when he doesn’t have the energy to tell eddie he has to go. it isn’t even embarassing for either of them, because eddie knows that richie can’t help it, that it’s the tumor’s fault, preventing him from basically doing anything at all. there are good days where richie would be really talkative and ask to go for a walk, the brunette pushing him in his wheelchair. he’d eat a good amount of jello or pudding, sometimes even pieces of very soft bread, all by himself. on the bad days, he had to be fed but his body would refuse even water, swallowing being a real challenge, and he’d be unable to find words to express himself until talking itself became a problem. the first week, he’s still able to walk around the house a little but then, his energy gradually sinks lower and lower.

 

richie has a relatively good day on march 15th.

“t-tell me somethin’, eds” his hand reaches out to push brown locks out of the other man’s face, the effort tires him.

“it’s really sunny outside, look. it’s like spring has already come in. just- just think about how warm it must be outside, sitting with the sun shining down on your face and the breeze caressing you. there’s families in the park, kids playing on the playground, too. one day we’ll take our kids to picnic there, like we always used to imagine, you remember? and maybe maisie” (“what…what about rose?”) “well, then maybe _rose_ will fall of the monkey bars and scrape her knee and cry really badly” (“like papa”) “oh shut up, those weren’t even tears in my eyes! anyway, she’ll cry but her older brother grayson will be right by her side and tell her that it’s just a little scratch and that it’ll heal very soon and that she should be proud of herself for at least attempting the monkey bars and we’ll just sit there and think about what amazing kids we have raised.” eddie keeps on talking about playgrounds and monkey bars and the day that they’ve met until richie’s eyes close all the way. he’s unconscious but still breathing. march 15th is the last relatively good day. richie and eddie are 27 when richie dies because of a tennisball-sized tumor in his brain.

 

 

the funeral is held three weeks later.

“i’d like to be able to say that richie tozier was strong and fought death until his last breath but truth is, he wasn’t and he didn’t, he couldn’t even form coherent sentences in his last month of living. richie knew that he’d die for a long time and when his condition got worse, he accepted it. he accepted death and didn’t fear it, not for a single second. when he asked me to take him home, i understood that he was dying and giving up and that fighting would make no sense, so i granted him his last wish. he slipped into unconsciousness on march 15th in our bedroom as spring shined its first rays of sunshine through our window with me by his side and died a few days later. we didn’t have the time to start a family yet but one day in the future, when my kids and i go through the photo album of our polaroids from college years and they ask who that guy with ridiculous glasses and hair like a hippie is, i’ll tell them about the love of my life that i lost way too early to the gruesomeness of life, the man who would’ve been their dad and an amazing one, too.

i have no tears to shed today, mostly because i shed them all beforehand, but also because i understand that even though it is unfair, this is how life goes. it takes the ones we love the most. death is inevitable and i know that when one day, when  _my_ day comes, i’ll be reunited with my love.”

 

“there is so much to say about richie tozier that i fear i don’t have enough time today to say. 

when his doctors and nurses look at him, they see his sickness. when his parents look at him they see the boy he once used to be in his childhood. when i look at him, i see the complete picture, i see richie tozier. i see the boy he was and the beautiful man he grew into, the man i’ve known my entire life. and i see so much more, his passion for music. photography. comedy. art, even though he sucks at it. and i see his potential, what he could’ve been if life had granted him more time, had granted me more time with him. the father he one day would be. i could see us sitting on the porch of our house, old and grey, holding our wrinkled hands and watching our kids and grandkids, proud of the family we have built. 

His sickness took over his body almost completely, drained him so much off energy that he could only stay in bed and had difficulties talking, but in the end he was still the same person I’ve gotten to know when I was four and married at the age of 19.”

 

**_~fin~ _ **

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!  
> i really hope that this is good as like a goodbye-for-now story? anyway here's some stuff you might not know:
> 
> brain herniation: a side effect (can be deadly) from very high pressure within your skull, caused by swelling due to head injury, strokes, bleeding or tumors. the pressure on the brain can cause a cutting off of the blood supply to various parts of the brain, thus resulting in severe disability or death.  
> intracranial pressure (ICP): the term for the pressure inside the skull. increased ICP can be caused by, for example, swelling of the brain or mass effects like brain tumors.  
> end-of-life phase: in this case, when a progression of the tumor is diagnosed and tumor treatment does not seem like a realistic option anymore, the end-of-life phase begins. the patient will only receive supportive treatment meant to keep their symptoms (like increased intracranial pressure) at a bay, thus maintaining the quality of life, and keep them comfortable.  
> temozolomide (TMZ): an oral chemotherapy drug used to treat glioblastoma multiforme and as a second-line treatment for astrocytoma. it can damage the dna of tumor cells and trigger their death, though some tumor cells are able to repair this kind of damage.  
> and i tried to make dr. kellar explain most of the gbm (glioblastoma multiforme) stuff in the story, though if you have any questions feel free to ask me!
> 
>  
> 
> see you sometime! (maybe i'll be back soon who knows lol)
> 
> xx julie


End file.
